Stephanie Johnson IS Solution Focused

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Tammy Johnson

I referenced a site about a year ago that I ran across which really resonated with me. It belongs to Stephanie Johnson and can be found at SolutionFocusedCounselling.com. Below is an excerpt from some of her information and I have taken the liberty of adding a period or numbering the list due to some formatting issues on my end when I copied and pasted it. (Stephanie, I hope you will forgive me!) It is also very meaningful to me that Stephanie is a Believer and follows some fundamental teachings laid out by the guidance provided by our Heavenly Father. From Stephanie’s book:

Basic assumptions about people and problems

The following are some of the assumptions and principles of solution focused framework which was influenced by Milton Erickson and the MRI team.

1. People operate out of their internal maps and not out of sensory experience.

2. People make the best choice for themselves at any given moment.

3. The explanation, theory, or metaphor used to relate facts about a person is not the person.

4. Respect all messages from the client.

5. Teach choice; never attempt to take choice away.

6. The resources the client needs lie within his or her own personal history.

7. Meet the client at his or her model of the world.

8. The person with the most flexibility or choice will be the controlling element in the system.

9. A person can’t not communicate.

10. If it’s hard work, reduce it down.

11. Outcomes are determined at the psychological level. (Lankton and Lankton, 1983)

12. Do not need to know the cause of the problem in order to find solutions. (Love This!)

13. Client is the expert in their own life.

14. People become problem saturated and lose their problem solving abilities.

15. People have strengths and resources within themselves to find solutions.

16. We do not need to go back to the past in order to influence the future.

17. The problem is the problem, the person is not the problem.

18. Change is inevitable. Small change leads to larger change.

19. Problems continue when you apply the wrong solution.

20. People in general are doing the best that they can.

21. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it doesn’t work, try something different.

22. Once you know what works, do more of it, (Cade, 2007)

The above are the assumptions about people and problems. In some respects it at first appears a simple formula, however the art in solution focused is the timing of interventions and techniques such as the miracle question, and for the counsellor not to get caught up in the problem talk, but move the conversation towards solution focused talk. I don’t know about you, but when I came across these principles it was very liberating as a counsellor to feel that I am not the expert in the client’s life, but a bystander and a facilitator. I found this exciting.

The client is the expert in their own life and we facilitate the process. Solution focused is at the opposite spectrum to psychoanalysis. Solution focused believes that you do not need to go back to childhood or hunt for the root cause of the problem in order to facilitate change. For some clients this is reassuring. Some clients find solution focused to be empowering and hopeful.

In 15 years of experiencing solution focused talk, the word HOPE comes to mind. Having said that solution focused does not have to go back to childhood to find the root cause of this problem is true, however as solution focused is client directed, if the client feels that it is necessary then the therapist will go there. However if the client is looking for analysis and treatment, then they have the wrong therapist.

In my practice I start where the client is at. I used whatever is useful to the client to facilitate change, as this is what it is all about, CHANGE.

What to know more? See Stephanie Johnson’s E-book, available here on line at Solution focused counselling.com, called Solution focused counselling…Keeping it Real, The art of helpful conversations. Only $14.99 Aud.

References:

Cade, B. W. (2007) Springs, Streams and Tributaries: A History of The Brief, Solution-focused Approach. In F. N. Thomas & T. Nelson (Eds) Clinical Applications of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. New York: The Haworth Press.

Lankton, S. and Lankton, C. (1983) The Answer Within: A Clinical Framework of Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Be the Revolution!

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Tammy Johnson

While I definitely didn’t intend for my blog to be (always) gushing about James River Assembly, the church I attend in Ozark, Missouri, I can also share that sometimes you just know when certain things are inserted into your life and this church continues to breathe influence into my life that couldn’t be more well timed. We just finished the 9th annual Designed For Life Women’s Conference and it was AMAZING! We heard from Charlotte Gambill who leads Life Church in England, John & Helen Burns, who started Victory Christian Centre (now known as Relate Church in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), Nancy Alcorn of Mercy Ministries, Donna Crouch of Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia, Marilyn Skinner of Watoto Church in Kampala, Uganda in Africa and Debbie Lindell of James River Women, a ministry under the umbrella of James River Assembly.

Every single message contained life-giving words….God-inspired truths that resonated across the hearts of the 5,500 women who were there. We heard:

That God is looking for movement through us.
You have to choose your position in life AND your disposition in life.
That the best part of life is who you get to do it with.
That some of the greatest pain in the world stems from “Dad” issues. That every child is born connected to Mom but their self-identity and strength comes from their Dad.
That everything we need to live a full and abundant life is already in us in seed form. It takes the Holy Spirit to water and fertilize each individual seed to help us have a life that flourishes that can then feed others.
If our children had to live on the power of our words, would they be able to? A person’s childhood is the reference point of their life. We must take responsibility for the atmosphere in our homes.
Time is the currency of life. (LOVE this one!)
Relationships should be based on commitment not convenience.
Pressure has a way of revealing exactly who and what we are made of.

I was especially excited about Project 12, which is an initiative to help encourage and inspire us to make a difference in the lives of others around us. We have been talking at work alot about this same type of focus for helping people around us and this will help us take it to the next level. The fundamental belief is that if we Impact ONE person in our community we will make a difference in the WORLD. I love the following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson….

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882); Philosopher, Poet, Author, Essayist

It goes without saying that I simply can’t wait for next year’s DFL Conference which is being held at JQH Arena in Springfield, Missouri. Debbie’s goal is to have 10,000 girls there and given the revolutionary hearts that her conference sparked this year, I would guess that she will hit that mark!

Ephesians 3:20-21

²⁰Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Critical Thinker

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Tammy Johnson

Viewing the world through the eyes of our children takes a very focused approach. My entire life I have been teased about being gullible which I easily translated into “open minded”. I have been told I was overly optimistic which I easily translated into “openly optimistic”. I have been chastised for being naive which I easily translated into “keeping a fresh perspective”. While I have benefited from hundreds of life experiences, all which have hopefully made me a little more wise, I can honestly say that I hope I never lose the ability to be an open minded, optimistic person who works hard at keeping my perspective fresh.

Recently, I picked up Jacob, our 11 year old, from school and on the way home we had his favorite radio station playing. He loves music and we love that he loves music. Normally on the way to and from school, he is allowed to be the car DJ. When a song came on from Justin Timberlake’s new album, Jacob chimed in that some of the kids at school were saying bad things about him up to and including that he was “gay”. I asked him why they would say that and he said because his voice is so high. I told Jacob that JT has always been a tremendous performer and is extremely talented and that the kids at school just didn’t understand that some people are just gifted with different ranges of voices when they sing. I told him that he has been wildly successful and always seemed to me to have his life pretty well put together. I told him that I thought he had just married his girlfriend of 4-5 years, Jessica Biel, and that she was beautiful and talented as well. I promised that I would show him a picture of their wedding day. None of that is to say that I know anything at all about Justin Timberlake’s personal life or have insight into his life choices. It just rubbed me wrong that people, even children, would be so quick to pass judgment on someone that they knew literally nothing about.

It was all too easy for me to wonder what in the world those kids were thinking in saying those type of things when it occurred to me that they had to have heard it somewhere. Children are the great “repeaters” and we learn our behaviors from those we watch. It made me sad. I wondered if any of the children at school have that same voice with a beautifully high range when they sing and if the other kids are unkind toward them causing them to never truly pursue what might be a JT inspired career? I can’t speak for anyone else’s children but I can certainly try and have influence over ours. As adults, do we really wonder where our children pick up being critically-minded? Where every thought is geared towards tearing people down, finding fault or judging them based on some stereotyped image?

That reminded me of a video that I saw during a presentation given by Chester Elton, author of The Carrot Principle, Orange Revolution, and All In among a couple others that I think have come out. It was the Battle at Kruger and you really have to watch the video to fully appreciate the points that Chester Elton made during his discussion. It is a riveting, true story about a herd of buffalo, a pride of lions and one really big crocodile all coming together on the shores of a waterhole located in Kruger National Park, South Africa. The parable is whether, in life, we choose to be a lion or a crocodile whose only purpose is to prey on others, constantly dragging them down or to be a tourist on the sideline and simply watch or to be a buffalo who come together in the herd in support of one another and run to the rescue of one less traveled, less experienced young buffalo. It is 8 minutes of a life-long story that you simply can’t stop watching until the very end.

Our role as believers should be to stand up for the less fortunate, even when they don’t always look like us, sound like us or believe in the same things we do. It’s easy to be nice when things are “calm at the watering hole”. Do we strive to be equally nice and supportive to those around us when things aren’t looking so good on the banks of where we get a drink and our thirst is high? Do we become less diligent with regard to seeing others as Jesus sees us….with unconditional love and an unending forgiveness for things that we haven’t even done yet? Or do we immediately jump in to tarnish others’ perspectives, making them think and believe the worst, standing on the shoulders of others to make ourselves seem bigger and better in comparison? We all struggle with those feelings, wanting that hint of superiority, seeking dominance, and appearing all-wise. And I think we all know, none of those feelings are from God.

I recently shared with my husband how fortunate my sister and I were to have our Grandfather in our lives when we were growing up. I told Steve that when I was with my Grandfather, he always made me feel like I was amazing. So I tried with everything I was to be amazing. He had a way of helping you see things with regard to possibilities instead of hindrances. A knack of asking you to stretch yourself and put yourself in your “neighbor’s shoes” and giving them the benefit of the doubt. I told Ashley just the other day when we were talking about somebody that she had encountered that was not very pleasant to interract with that she had no idea what that person was dealing with that day. Maybe she just lost her child….or found out she had cancer…..or who’s husband was abusive. We have no idea what is going on in other people’s lives. We are tasked with being a place of encouragement for those we come in contact with, even when they are in over their heads, come from a different walk of life than what we are familiar with, or sometimes aren’t deserving in our opinion.

You can oftentimes tell when your quiet, kind words find their way in to the heart of your child. You can see the knowledge soak into them and settle softly in their heart. You can see the truth become a small gift that they store safely away. And you know down to your depths that when it really matters, they will bring it back out to share with some one else. Those are the moments that inspired me in the first place to start this blog. Patient and Kind…just like the Lord and my Savior has always been to me.

Easter is coming……

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Tammy Johnson

I received an email from YouVersion which is the app I use for the online Bible saying that they had several different devotional plans for the last week before Easter Sunday. The story below is one I copied from that, written by John Piper:

A Vision for Holy Week

As I have tried to prepare my heart to meet Jesus in a special way on Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Resurrection Day, a series of pictures has come back to my mind again and again. Let me try to describe the story for you.

A little lamb was born all wooly-white with skinny legs and a wet nose, pretty much like all the other little lambs. But as the lamb grew into a sheep, the other sheep began to notice a difference. This sheep had a strange lump on his forehead.

At first, they thought he’d been hit, but the lump never went down. Instead, a large pad of deep, white wool grew over the lump and made it very soft and firm. The lump might have stopped attracting attention except for the fact that this sheep began to use the lump on his head in very strange ways.

For one thing, the lump seemed to weigh down his head so that he always looked like he was bowing and showing reverence to some invisible king. Then he began to seek out other sheep that were sick or wounded. He would use the firm, soft lump on his forehead to help the weak onto their feet and to wipe away tears.

Whole flocks of sheep started to follow him around, but the goats laughed him to scorn. Sheep were disgusting enough, but a sheep with a queer lump on his forehead was more than they could take. They harassed him all the time and made up jokes and taunts: “How come you hang your wooly head? Your lump made out of woolen lead?” And it just infuriated them that he would walk away from them and keep on doing his quiet works of mercy.

So one day the goats surrounded him and rammed him with their horns until he died, and they left him alone in the field. But as he lay there, something very strange happened. He began to get bigger. The bloody wool fell away and revealed a sleek, white, horse-like hair. The soft pad of deep white wool dropped off his forehead and straight out of the merciful lump grew a mighty horn of crimson steel unlike any horn that has ever been or will be again.

And then, as if by command, the massive Unicorn leaped to his feet. His back stood eight feet above the ground. The muscles in his shoulders and neck were like marble. The tendons in his legs were like cables of iron. His head was no longer bowed, and when he looked to the right or to the left, the crimson horn slashed the air like a saber dipped in blood.

When the sheep saw him, they fell down and worshiped. He bowed and touched each one on the forehead with the tip of his horn, whispered something in their ear, and soared away into the sky. He hasn’t been seen since.

That’s the vision in my mind as I enter Holy Week. It’s a portrait of Jesus Christ painted by Isaiah under the inspiration of God and put on display by Matthew 12:18–21. Like every good work of art, this portrait has a purpose, and the purpose is to cause us to set our hope on Jesus Christ. And I am praying that this will happen in your life, because I know that everything else you set your hope on will let you down in the end. But if you hope in Jesus Christ, he will be honored in your life, and you will never regret it.

AMEN!

Can you say WOW???

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Tammy Johnson

How do you describe a season in your life when everything that is being placed before you has a common theme? How do you explain it when it seems like you have some type of intuitive wisdom being breathed into your spiritual ear? I can tell you that anything insightful, even remotely wise or forward-thinking has way less to do with my life experiences and more to do with me constantly asking God to keep me focused on the things that have eternal meaning. I am humbled daily by the blessings he has granted me and try to wait in anticipation of what is around the next corner.

Back in February of this year, I did alot of research (unusual for me!) on a new desk for my office. Long story short, I looked at hundreds of desks online until I found the perfect one that would fit in my office. So I ordered it. Simple, right? Yeah, right up to the time that I found out it was “imported” and that it was delayed 5, yes 5, times before it finally shipped and I received it in July. So at the busiest time possible in my job, I took delivery of my new desk and decided it was time to clean and organize my office. I will mention that I had been feeling challenged with juggling alot of projects in the air and had almost decided that my life was meant to be chaotic this year. As I called upon a few years of experience at realigning my own world and I waded through all the “stuff” currently on my plate, I asked myself if my world was crazy, who’s in charge of that? If things were spinning out of control and I was struggling to get my legs beneath me, who controlled that? Well, the answer was me.

I took a giant step back and assumed a high-level view of what I had on my plate, what areas I really needed to be involved in and what things I could shift to other, very capable Managers and started making a list. I also thought about what dots could be connected for our company that would provide the biggest return for our customers and whether we were leveraging all of our resources towards helping our customers in the most ways possible. What I soon realized was that by taking a deep breath and steadying myself in the fast-moving rapids of never-ending deadlines, problem solving and everyday issues I had enabled myself to gain some perspective that only a couple weeks before had been missing. Had my work load changed? Not really. Had the deadlines moved? Nope. Was there fewer issues to deal with? Not by a long shot. However, the manner in which I approached those things had shifted. I had prayed for God to provide wisdom and direction and to help me become “less busy” and to work smarter not harder and somehow that perspective had been gifted to me over a period of 10-14 days.

On the heels of that tremendous adjustment to how I had been approaching my job, I had been invited to attend a seminar at which Chester Elton, affectionately referred to as the Apostle of Appreciation, was going to speak. He has co-written The Carrot Principle, The Orange Revolution and his newest book All In and if you have never heard him speak OR read one of his books, I would encourage you to do so. It was one of the MOST amazing days I have spent at a seminar EVER! Lots of down to earth ways to connect with people, both professionally and personally, artfully illustrated with stories, videos and resources that can be easily applied straight out of the gate. And boy was I excited to share all I had learned that day! I warned everybody that I might be a little hard to take for awhile.

Then immediately following the seminar by Chester Elton, our church that I love with all my heart James River Assembly hosts a women’s conference each year Designed for Life and I attended a 3-day event there. Priscilla Shirer, Dianne Wilson, Christine Caine and our own beloved Debbie Lindell all spoke at the conference and, as usual, it was LIFE-CHANGING! And talk about layering over the top on the very things I had just spent the last couple of months reviewing and managing….everything just helped me gain even better footing in those rapids I was describing earlier and really solidified in my mind that I was on the right path and spending time on the things I was supposed to. You know how sometimes we ask God if we are really committed to the things we’re supposed to be? Well, I’ve had those moments too and this wasn’t one of them. I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing and where.

So, because I know I’m going to be a little hard to put up with over the next few months as I try and put in words all the things I have running around in my head, I’ll apologize now and get it over with. And if you want to hear a truly remarkable story about a life that has been transformed, do some research on Brian “Head” Welch, former member of the heavy-metal band Korn. His new website can be found by clicking here.

More to come!!!

Don’t ever forget……….

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Tammy Johnson

I don’t ever want to forget that this is why we are here and to remember what was done for us to provide the possibility of spending eternity in heaven with our heavenly father. I love this song and found this video which is so moving and meaningful. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sza4rh1YzsM

Selah – You Raise Me Up Lyrics

When I am down, and oh my soul, so weary. When troubles come, and my heart burdened be. Then I am still and wait here in the silence. Until You come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be. You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be.

There is no life no life without its hunger. Each restless heart beats so imperfectly. But when you come and I am filled with wonder. Sometimes I think I glimpse eternity.

Patient and Kind

Wise words for someone like me

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